Delivering marketing campaigns and programs to a top fortune 500 brand, across five regions, with a core team of six team members covering six different cultures, and no offices at all…
Sounds cool, doesn’t it?😉
Wings4U is a 100% virtual B2B marketing agency. This means that we’re working with people across the globe without any offices. We’re able to hire the best marketing talents and creative artists without geographical limitations. Having said that, I think we could say that we’re living the digital transformation.
As team lead for one of our key accounts I focus on team cohesion, productivity and deliverables across regions, departments and stakeholders. I support and coach our regional marketing managers in attaining established targets.
When I started for Wings4U I was already used to a flexible working environment. But with the truly virtual nature of our company, this is the next level of being a digital nomad.
My secrets for team success
1. Supporting each other
I love people’s willingness to help others. All team members have their own projects and responsibilities. And, of course, shared goals are important to have a clear team direction. This helps in stimulating team cohesion. But the real willingness to help each other is part of your personality. This is an important topic I bring up during hiring interviews.
2. Trust and transparency
Without trust and transparency, it’s impossible to be successful as a team. I believe that this is important in every working environment, but I experienced the importance of it even more in this virtual environment. I cannot always see what, how and when team members are working and communicating with clients. That’s why trust and transparency are the most important key values within our team. When I ask team members about their workload, customer feedback or if they still enjoy what they’re doing, it’s important that they’re comfortable to share the facts and to be open and honest.
3. Keep learning
To keep our promise towards our customers Wings4U is continuously learning and evolving our services. For me, the most important key to achieve this is teamwork. We learn from each other and share best practices across the globe every day. This helps us innovate our services and help clients with their marketing challenges in the best possible way.
And our virtual environment doesn’t excuse us from investing in personal development. We’ve proved that it’s possible to organize 100% digital team workshops. Keeping a multi-cultural team engaged and energized in online workshops isn’t an easy job. But we’ve proved that it’s possible!
4. Common language
A common language sounds strange for a team speaking six different languages.
What I mean with a common team language is a clear approach on how we serve clients, solve issues, innovate services and share learnings. It’s important to enable your team with the right tools and models to implement processes and share information. For example, for our service innovations, we’ve developed a business rhythm which we can use for any future project, thus helping to grow our business.
Recently we asked clients about their key values when working with marketing vendors.
Guess what? They all mentioned: relationship, trust, transparency, sharing learnings, and streamlined communication.
Funny, isn’t it? 😉
